


No One's Here To Sleep

by transboywriting



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: AU, Canonical Character Death, Childhood Friends, Friends to Enemies, M/M, Underage Drinking, Underage Drug Use, and pynch, and ronan deserves better, as a concept, even though kavinsky is a terrible person, i just really like rovinsky, so this is my way of getting rovinsky
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-30
Updated: 2020-10-30
Packaged: 2021-03-08 22:40:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,924
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27284308
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/transboywriting/pseuds/transboywriting
Summary: A oneshot au of The Dream Thieves, but Ronan and Kavinsky were childhood friends because that makes the whole thing hurt way worse!The title is from one of the songs on my Rovinsky playlist, which you can listen to here https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7gBoQkTFWyf3xCnrUMLq3h?si=E_uvBRrgS2KMCZzSgCAmzw
Relationships: Joseph Kavinsky/Ronan Lynch, Ronan Lynch/Adam Parrish
Comments: 2
Kudos: 28





	No One's Here To Sleep

It was Niall Lynch taught Ronan how to drive, but it was Joseph Kavinsky who taught Ronan how to drive like he meant it. Niall taught him how to shift gears, where to place his hands on the steering wheel, all the things to avoid so he didn’t get pulled over. Kavinsky taught him how 90 miles per hour felt in his hair at midnight, the screech of tires and the smell of burning rubber and gasoline, how to do all the things he was taught to avoid without getting caught. 

Declan hated him, of course. Even before their dads died and Ronan stopped being able to smile, Kavinsky was nothing but trouble. Declan told him to stay away and Ronan didn’t listen because what was wrong with having a friend who wasn’t a brother?

They weren’t friends, really. They were but they weren’t. Ronan started wearing leather bracelets and the next day Kavinsky showed up with an identical set. The day after that Ronan had pure-white sunglasses with dark lenses perched on his nose. They laughed and never mentioned it again. 

That was the thing about Ronan and Kavinsky. They didn’t talk. They drove and drank and raced; Kavinsky did a line off Ronan’s collarbone and they set things on fire in abandoned parking lots and Ronan pretended he didn’t notice or care when Kavsinky and Prokopenko disappeared into a room together. They never talked about their dreams, or their dads, or the way they were always looking at each other.

At school they pretended they didn’t know each other. Kavinsky had his friends and Ronan had Gansey and Noah and later Adam and Blue. They didn’t look at each other at school. But afterwards, Ronan would sneak out and meet up with Kavinsky and his friends and drink until they blacked out.

Once, they sat in the front seat of Kavinsky’s Mitsubishi (Ronan swore he’d seen him crash it a few days ago but knew better than to ask), passing a vodka bottle back and forth. Kavinsky’d had something else too, something Ronan didn’t want, but they were both dizzy and mindless.

The bottle was almost gone when Kavinsky finally said “Lynch. Kiss me.”

Ronan said “No.”

So Kavinsky leaned over and kissed across Ronan’s shoulders, neck, throat; he left bruises that almost blended into Ronan’s new tattoo. Ronan squeezed Kavinsky’s thigh and breathed slow and told himself it was okay that he felt so hollow.

The next morning when he drove back to Monmouth, Adam was already there fixing up the Pig, his delicate hands smeared with grease, and Ronan disappeared into his room before he could see the hickeys. 

When something went wrong with one of Kavinsky’s cars, he got rid of it like a sin and got a new one from the place they both refused to acknowledge. When something went wrong with Gansey’s or Ronan’s car, Adam came and fixed it like it was holy.

Ronan tried very hard not to think about that or the bones of Adam’s wrists or the grease stains on his face that he never seemed to notice. Especially when he started bringing Blue around. Ronan wanted to hate her, and he did at first, but he couldn’t hate anything that made Adam smile. 

Except himself.

So he went back to Kavinsky. They drove and drank and raced; he let Kavinsky bite his throat and told him to fuck Proko instead when he wouldn’t let it go any further than that. 

He laughed at that. “One day, Lynch. I can never figure out if you or Dick-Three is on top, but”—then he leaned in, lips brushing the curve of Ronan’s ear, burning his skin—”one day when we fuck, I’ll be on top.”

Ronan was going to be sick.

He walked home that night while Kavinsky fucked Prokopenko in the back seat of Proko’s Golf. Instead of home he found himself at St. Agnes’s, staring up at the dark window where Adam was sleeping, and he thought about how no one wanted him the way he wanted them and whether that meant something was wrong with him or them. He stood there, want eating him alive, until the edge of the sky started to go hazy pink and he walked back to Monmouth to find Gansey still sleeping and Chainsaw scolding him for staying out so late.

When Gansey drove him to the field where he’d left his car after school, Ronan found a picture tucked under a windshield wiper, and he knew immediately that it came from the place neither of them would ever name because he’d never had Kavinsky’s dick in his mouth.

“What’s that?” Gansey called from the rolled-down window of the Pig and Ronan crumpled it and shoved into his pocket.

“Kavinsky.” 

He burned it as soon as they got home.

That was the last time he hung out with Kavinsky. They still raced because they always did. Ronan didn’t know who he’d be without Kavinsky to fight. He focused on Adam and Gansey and Blue and Noah and Glendower, Glendower, Glendower. And he was okay.

But then Gansey took Adam to D.C. and a night horror destroyed the Pig and there was only one person who could help.

Kavinsky grinned, all sharp teeth and dark, hooded eyes when Ronan strode into his theater room. 

“Aw, Lynch. Is it finally my lucky day?”

“I want you to teach me,” Ronan said, no time for Kavinsky’s bullshit. “Teach me how you dream things so well.”

Kavinsky’s grin changed, the fire in his eyes burning so bright he almost looked insane. Maybe he was. Maybe this was what he really looked like.

“It’s easy,” he said, getting up and standing way too close to Ronan, “if you’re not a fucking idiot.”

“Just fucking teach me,” Ronan growled again.

So he did. One hundred white Mitsubishis. Two dozen fake licenses. Two of them. Green pills and red pills and Twizzlers and enough beer to drown them both. 

Two of them. Lynch and Kavinsky, Ronan and Joseph. Two thieves, together again. If he wasn’t here for Gansey and Noah and Cabeswater it would have been easy to forget that anything else existed. 

A pen. A gun. Molotov cocktail. Diploma. Kavinsky’s mouth on the scars criss-crossing Ronan’s arms. Impossible gadgets and singing stones, bras and plants. Anything and everything they wanted, they could create.

Kavinsky gave him an impossibly red pill, fingers on his tongue just long enough for him to taste gasoline and sweat before it dragged Ronan down, wrecked him. He collapsed slowly onto the hood of the car, and then he felt Kavinsky’s fingers on his back, tracing silent words into his tattoo.  


_Want me want me want me  
_

_I did,_ Ronan tried to say. _I did, once, before you were like this and I was like this._

The red pill destroyed him, and then he did it. The Pig, perfect and whole. Unwrecked. Gansey in car form, strange and beautiful and captivating, uncomprehendable to anyone who didn’t really know him.

Ronan grinned and said “I’m going.”

Kavinsky’s face collapsed into something horrifyingly like the Kavinsky he’d known as a kid. Like he was Joseph again, the boy Ronan trusted, the boy Ronan loved and the boy who loved him back in their own fucked up way.

“You’re fucking kidding. All of that and not even a kiss goodbye?”

Kavinsky was back, and any love Ronan had once had for him shriveled up and died.

“All I wanted was for you to teach me. You did. Now I’m leaving.”

“He’ll get sick of you. Gansey _and_ Adam. No one can want you forever.” Desperation burned the edges of his words.

“Not even you?” Ronan asked with a raised eyebrow, fingers wrapped around the handle of the Pig’s door.

Kavinsky’s eyes widened. He was silent. And then—

“There’s only with me or against me.”

“You ruined any chance of you and me a long time ago, Joseph.”

He sneered, eyes dark and ears red. “I will fucking burn you down.”

“You wish.”

Kavinsky got up and stood way too close, finger and thumb in a fake gun that he gently touched to Ronan’s temple.

“Bang,” he said softly. “See you in the streets.”

Kavinsky stepped back and Ronan drove away and he stupidly thought that would be the end of it. He got the Pig back and he knew how to fix Cabeswater and Noah and it was all okay now, wasn’t it? They could fix it. It was all gonna be fine.

_your mom calls me after we spend the day together  
ask me what my first dream was  
my favorite forgery is prokopenko  
i’m going to eat you alive man_

A white Mitsubishi with a set of keys in the ignition and a knife graphic on the side in the parking lot of Monmouth. 

_this one’s for you. just the way you like it: fast and anonymous._  


This could still be fine. He’d get over it.  


Kavinsky: _ballsack._  
Ronan: _shitstack._  
Kavinsky: _coming to 4th of july?_  
Ronan: _would you stop if you knew it was destroying the world?_  
Kavinsky: _god that would be awesome_

He’d been stupid to think this would be easy.

_hey lynch i didn’t leave that car for it to just sit while you blow iii_

Then Adam disappeared to fix Cabeswater, and Matthew wasn’t at church and something sick and worrying settled into his stomach.

_what’s up mofo_

Two different numbers: Matthew, who always saw Kavinsky as less of a villain and more of a charming rogue; Kavinsky himself, who wasn’t good at being told no. It would have been easy to get Matthew to follow him.

One thousand nightmares of Matthew dead. Blood in his curls, blood in his teeth, flies in his eyes, flies in his guts.

Ronan couldn’t think of a single thing he’d ever loved about Kavinsky.

So they raced to the party at the strip and ten identical Mitsubishis and—

_I let him kiss me. I let him touch me. I wanted him to touch me._

_He was my friend. He was my friend. He was my friend._

Lynch and Kavinsky, Ronan and Joseph. Greywaren and Thief. Walking the line between friends and enemies and something dangerously more. Dreaming up creatures to destroy each other.

It was always going to end like this.

In the dream he saw Adam stacking stones, and he said he knew what Ronan had done with the rent. Ronan wanted to give to Adam everything Kavinsky took.

In the dream she asked _“Why do you hate you?”_

_“I don’t.”_

It was this: night horror and dragon, killing each other.

It was this: all of Kavinsky’s dream things, destroyed.

It was this: Matthew finally, _finally_ , inside the last car.

It was this: Kavinsky scrambling onto the hood.

It was this: Joseph and Ronan, nine years old, standing on the hood of Niall’s car, laughing and running away when he yelled at them for it.

“The world’s a nightmare.”

“Get down!” Ronan shouted.

He didn’t. Of course he didn’t.

“Come down, you bastard, _please_!”

In the moment before the dragon arrived and Ronan ducked away to shield Matthew, Kavinsky turned, and Ronan saw in his eyes that he’d also known.

It was always going to end like this.

A blast of fire. Kavinsky gracelessly slumping off the car. The last Mitsubishi crashing into a building, Proko asleep at the wheel.

Kavinsky was dead. Kavinsky had been dying since they were kids.

_Dying’s a boring side effect._


End file.
